Uzbek police deny 'bomb plot'

By Monica Whitlock
BBC Tashkent correspondent

President Karimov has led the country's war on terror

Uzbekistan's secret police have held a special briefing to rebut charges that they were complicit in a set of bomb explosions blamed on Islamists in 1999.

The charges come from a prisoner convicted in the attacks, which killed 16 people in and near government offices in the capital Tashkent.

The bombings were said to be an attempt on the life of President Islam Karimov.

They projected the Central Asian leader to the forefront of what later became called the war on terror.

Grave allegations

It is most unusual for the shadowy secret police to step into the limelight by holding a briefing about themselves.

The Uzbek regime has been accused of denying freedoms

But the allegations against them are of the utmost gravity. They come from Zainuddin Askarov, who said that the secret police knew that the attacks of 1999 were planned but did nothing to stop them.

He cited as evidence the fact that the man said to be behind the bombings, Bahram Abdullayev, had been imprisoned for months before they happened and that he claimed to have told his interrogators everything.

How was it, Mr Askarov said, that the police got the photos of the wanted men out so quickly? Because they already knew them.

Mr Askarov was speaking in a Tashkent jail to journalists invited in fact by the secret police, apparently to hear a reiteration of the received version after challenges to it surfaced on the internet.

Mr Askarov, it seems, seized the chance to set the record straight. After four years, he said, he wanted to tell the truth.

'Shadowy play'

The secret police in their briefing rebutted every allegation.

They knew nothing about the plot beforehand, they said, and could only suppose that Mr Askarov had been taken ill.

It is not easy to interpret these events.

There is endless shadow play in Uzbek politics and it is possible that Mr Askarov is being manipulated by some power, perhaps even within the secret police.

It is also possible that he has unilaterally taken a huge personal risk.

Either way, suspicions which most people dare not speak of even in their own homes have suddenly surfaced in public.